The Delta variant could be more transmissible in schools. More Hotez: "The thing that really worries me is here in the South, sometimes the school year starts pretty early in August. And now we're going to have all those people mixing together in the schools. This is going to be tough." The schools question will be hotly debated again. Many Americans got more comfortable with the idea of in-person schooling at the end of the last school year, when cases were dropping, masks were commonplace and vaccine rates were rising. There's no indication the FDA will soon authorize Covid vaccines for children under 12, however. And many Americans, vaccinated or not, gave up on masks after the CDC said they were not needed, outdoors or in, for most situations as long as a person had been vaccinated.